Stanford women withstand strong defensive effort from Arizona in NCAA championship game in San Antonio.
Stanford women hold off Arizona, win 3rd national championship
After an NCAA Tournament in which Stanford had to overcome a 14point deficit to beat Louisville in the Elite Eight and then won its Final Four game against South Carolina by a point after the Gamecocks missed two short shots in the final seconds, the Cardinal’s hopes for the program’s first national title since 1992 came down to the last 6.1 seconds against Arizona on Sunday in San Antonio.
Stanford led 5453 with the Wildcats inbounding near midcourt after the Cardinal’s 21st turnover of the game.
Pac12 Player of the Year Aari McDonald got the ball and was swarmed by Anna Wilson, Lexie Hull and Cameron Brink. McDonald lofted a 3point attempt from beyond the top of the key.
“I was just, like, ‘Oh, please God, don’t go in.’ ” Stanford guard Haley Jones said.
“We had three people on her because that’s how good she is,” Stanford guard Kiana Williams said. “I was for sure scared for a minute when it left her hands.”
The shot was off the mark and the Cardinal players got to celebrate their 20th consecutive win, one that will put championship rings on their fingers.
Considering the twists and turns of the final three of those 20 victories, Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer said, “I just think that sometimes you’ve just got to be lucky. I will admit it: We were fortunate. We were very fortunate to win.”
Arizona head coach Adia Barnes said her team lost not just because of the final sequence.
“It’s never the last play,” Barnes said, “but it obviously just stings pretty bad.”
Stanford (312) won each of the two regularseason meetings with the Wildcats (216) by double digits, but Arizona proved to be much tougher in April than it was in January and February.
The Cardinal prevailed in large part because of a 4729 rebounding edge and because Jones rose to the occasion once more.
The sophomore guard from Santa Cruz had a teamhigh 17 points, including Stanford’s last three on a threepoint play with 21⁄2 minutes left.
That followed a 24point performance against South Carolina in which she hit the winning jumper with 32 seconds left. She was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
She credited her teammates with “instilling in me with their confidence that they had, so down the stretch, I just knew if the ball came to me, I knew I had to shoot it — and I had the confidence in myself to make those shots.”
Williams said Jones is “a pro. She’s a pro as a sophomore. I feel like she can make a WNBA team right now with her skill set.”
That skill set includes excellent court vision, strong ballhandling and the ability to convert on drives through the lane.
“What you see with Haley is the tip of the iceberg,” VanDerveer said.
VanDerveer and the Cardinal won national championships in 1990 and 1992. Not only was Sunday’s title Stanford’s first since ’92, it was the first for any West Coast school since then.
Stanford managed to grab this one despite having to spend two months on the road after Santa Clara County banned contact sports in late November in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“It’s been chaotic, hectic. It was just a long, very difficult journey,” Jones said. “Being on the road, sleeping in hotels, living out of your bag, it’s just a lot. You’re on the bus. You’re on planes all the time, and there’s just never really an end in sight.”
During that vagabond stretch, VanDerveer passed the late Pat Summitt (1,098) for the most career victories by a head coach in women’s basketball history. Sunday’s win put VanDerveer’s total at 1,125.
“To win it for Tara, in the same year that she’s become the alltime winningest coach, it just means everything,” Williams said.
Williams, a San Antonio native, also savored the fact that Stanford won the title in her hometown.
That provided a nice bookend to Stanford’s first national title in 1990. That Final Four took place in Knoxville, Tenn., near the hometown of Jennifer Azzi, the Cardinal’s starting point guard.
During the postgame news conference, a reporter asked VanDerveer, 67, if she might consider retirement in that she could go out on top.
She didn’t say definitively that she’d return next season, but she certainly seemed more than ready to keep coaching.
After these last three taut games of this championship season, she did have some advice for those thinking about entering her profession:
“If you’ve got a faint heart or a weak stomach, then don’t coach.”
Briefly: McDonald had a gamehigh 22 points but was 5for20 from the floor. … Arizona went 17for59 (28.8%) from the field. No team shot better than 41.8% against Stanford all season . ... Hull had her second straight doubledouble with 10 points and 10 rebounds . ... Sunday marked the 125th anniversary of the first women’s college basketball game. On April 4, 1896, Stanford beat Cal 21 in San Francisco.